Now is the time to act over demise of Wick Airport
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Holyrood Notebook by Rhoda Grant
The writing was on the wall for Wick Airport’s vital air links as early as 2018 when my Highlands and Islands Labour colleague, David Stewart, first raised the issue with the Scottish Government’s transport secretary.
Then, it was a hotelier and other local businesses who said the Wick-Edinburgh route was under threat.
A year later, it was obvious the Wick-Aberdeen route was of equal concern and again transport secretary Michael Matheson was contacted with support for a Public Service Obligation to be put on the routes as they were vulnerable and needed ring-fenced with government aid to give them protection.
Since then there have been questions from Labour on the floor of the Scottish Parliament, urging action, and in October last year I lodged two Parliamentary Questions asking again what action was being taken after Loganair ended its Wick-Edinburgh service and Eastern Airways pulled out of its Wick-Aberdeen route.
The answer was that the aviation industry has been profoundly impacted by Covid-19 and that the secretary was “considering carefully the business case” submitted by Caithness Chamber of Commerce. Oh, yes, and the Scottish Government would respond as soon as possible.
Well, the time has come for them to step up, especially as there’s been one casualty of the airport having no scheduled flights to major Scottish cities. Let’s just take that in. Caithness has no air connectivity to Edinburgh and Aberdeen. It’s really hard to comprehend, isn’t it?
The management of Wick Harbour wrote to me explaining the dire situation last week, where a company had pulled out of using its facilities due to there being no flights at Wick. The workers were being bussed to Aberdeen until the company pulled the plug and now Buckie is to be the base for those working on the wind farm.
The last thing the area needs is a reason not to invest in projects and jobs. Simple and plain economics. Connectivity by train, by bus, by air and by road matters.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) studied the impact of the pandemic in September and concluded that the region is likely to take longer to recover than Scotland as a whole. In part that was due to the high proportion of micro businesses and the self-employed, especially across some of the hardest hit sectors, construction, distribution, hotels and restaurants. Recovery is not predicted until at least 2023.
Moreover, HIE said there may be economic scarring and loss of productive capacity for years to come and employment levels will reduce which could lead to population decline as people seek employment elsewhere. That will also affect job prospects for young people.
So the last thing we need is more foot dragging from the Scottish Government.
The second Parliamentary Question I lodged asked what assessment the Scottish Government had made of the impact on Highlands and Islands air routes of the Covid-19 restrictions, and what action it was taking to protect the region’s aviation connectivity.
Mr Matheson’s reply really didn’t hit the mark for me. The government said it was keeping close contact with airlines, airports and other stakeholders to understand the impact, increasing the subsidy to Highlands and Islands Airports so it could remain open for a skeleton service. It was “keeping the situation under constant review and will intervene again if necessary”.
Now is the time. It must be.
